The process of converting your CV to a résumé can be an emotional, frustrating and time-consuming process. One question scholars often have is how to position their academic credentials on a résumé. Whether you’re ABD or a Ph.D., it can be a struggle to figure out whether or not you should proudly put your years in university front and centre, or try to tuck that delicate information away as much as possible.
In the interviews I’ve conducted with leavers, the answer is yes and no. It actually completely depends on the job you’re applying for. When Shane McCleary first hit the non-academic job market as an ABD from Johns Hopkins, she was told by someone at an advertising agency, “You have no transferable skills.” This caused her to entirely re-work her résumé, scrapping any and all references to conferences, publications and scholarships. Instead, she focused on the skills she knew she had—time management, multi-tasking, communications—and landed in film and television sales.
Krista Scott-Dixon’s first post-academic job was for a health-based research institute. She saw the position advertised at CharityVillage (a site she was checking because of its focus on the non-profit sector), and didn’t have an inside scoop on what the organization was looking for. But because the job was that of a researcher, Krista let her freaky academic flag fly. The employer was likely only expecting someone with an M.A., so her Ph.D. was actually an asset because it demonstrated her impeccable research skills.
In other cases, it may be more difficult to gauge just how much you should trumpet your academic accomplishments and how much you should massage them into a message your potential employer wants to hear. It’s really just a matter of seeing how much overlap there is between the kind of work you did as a scholar and what the advertised job requires. Does the job involve filling out grant proposals, conducting surveys, moderating seminars, creating reports, meeting with stakeholders? If so, you probably don’t need to feel too anxious about your academic background since all of these things have their ivory tower analog: scholarship applications, research, teaching, writing and committee work. But if the job has a very different context than academic life (if the work takes place outside, if the work involves constantly interacting with lots of people, if it has a physical dimension), you might have to massage things a bit more.
Regardless of whether or not you boldly state your education experience at the top of the résumé or not, it will still be up to you to spell out exactly to potential employers what exactly your transferable skills are. Starting next week, I’ll be posting a 5-part series about how you can best go about identifying those transferable skills. You’ve got all the skills you need to land a non-academic job; it’s just a matter of discovering how best to convey them.
What would be your ideal post-academic job? Is it the kind of work that dovetails with what you’ve done as a scholar?
Tagged as:
resume
Over the past few years, there have been more and more rumblings about the need for research conducted in the humanities and social sciences to be “relevant” to the general public (or taxpayers, as the debate is often framed). The recession has made this demand even more pressing. Mark Taylor was getting at that a little bit in his NYT op-ed. But this also came up recently in Canada when the federal budget earmarked some SSHRC money for “business-related degrees.”
Generally, my stomach turns when I read stories involving universities becoming more “relevant,” because that’s usually code for “commodified.” Because it’s not always immediately self-evident why certain strains of research are important, social sciences and humanities disciplines are often held up for ridicule and scrutiny (remember when Frank magazine used to mock the titles of papers presented at the Learneds?). In turn, the fear is that if the mandates of funding bodies and universities change in response to this need for knowledge to be immediately applicable to something, the role universities play will be devalued. The research that grad students and faculty produce will be held up to a commercial standard (rather than the standard of peer review), i.e. one in which studying Chaucer is much less important than producing widgets.
But I also know that scholars secretly wonder about the value of their work by wondering how useful it is. Generally, though, it’s only the former academics I talk to who admit to having thoughts like, “Is my work really useful?” When asked of oneself (rather than having the question posed to you by a funding body with an explicit policy mandate of utility behind it), this question usually means, “How is my work manifesting itself in the world?” Or more to the point, “Is my work making a difference?”
For the people who have left academia, the answer is, typically, no. What I’ve found consistently in my interviews with former academics is that there is a desire to connect with people that goes beyond the standard confines of an academic career–even a wildly successful one. For leavers, the number of articles published in peer-reviewed journals ceases to matter at the point where connecting with people (beyond the journal’s narrow audience) becomes more important.
And yet, there is still a vigorous denial about the need for scholars to feel like they’re making a contribution to society. They don’t need to feel that way because they’re making a contribution to scholarship. But for those of you who are thinking about leaving, is the desire to make a difference in the world a factor motivating your decision? Or is being useful just being a sellout?
Tagged as:
research,
useful
Whoa. Have you seen this op-ed piece from Sunday’s New York Times yet? You know, the one that starts off with the powerful line, “Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning.” As such, Mark C. Taylor argues, it needs to be restructured. Taylor makes six suggestions for overhauling universities, including ditching departments in favour of “problem-focused programs,” developing curriculum that is built like a spiderweb across different fields of inquiry, increasing collaboration among institutions, overhaul the notion of the doctoral dissertation (all praises to that!), imposing retirement and abolishing tenure.
Notably, Taylor also suggests expanding career options for graduate students, since most will never get jobs in the fields in which they’re trained. This only seems to make sense–especially to the readers of Leaving Academia!
And yet, transforming graduate education to ensure that students would be prepared to find work in the private sector, non-profit or public sectors would really challenge some fundamental assumptions about the university (and this is surely what Mark C. Taylor is getting at).
On one hand, I completely object to graduate education going in the direction of undergraduate education, i.e. turning grad school into a job factory. I am old enough to hold close all those values about a liberal arts education that really went out of fashion in the 1990s–that school should be about cultivating the mind and not just producing commodifiable answers, and that inquiry for the pleasure of it is actually okay.
And yet, training grad students in a career vacuum is neither smart nor feasible. To continue to fail to give graduate students training or options regarding their career paths once they leave grad school is a colossal failure. It’s a failure to leave former students feeling useless and isolated, but it’s also a failure to society to not cultivate channels for this incredible talent pool to take their knowledge and talents.
My question is regarding what role exactly should universities, administrators, faculty and departments take when considering how they can expand professional options for their graduate students. Just acknowledging the existence of the non-academic labour market would probably be a good start. But what needs to happen to make sure that grad students leave school with a strong sense of where they can go if the academic dream doesn’t work out for them? What do you think?
Tagged as:
News,
universities
Last week’s issue of Toronto’s NOW magazine had an interview with British director Steve McQueen (no, not that Steve McQueen…the one who’s alive and directed Hunger). In it, he said,
At the end of the day, you know, we die. It’s not about money or how much stuff you can take with you–it’s all about what you do. As long as I can pay my mortgage, I’m happy–it’s as simple as that. Therefore we can take risks, because what else is there? There’s nothing else to do, literally. As long as you can have shelter and you can eat and you’ve some clothes on your back, what else is there to do but to take risks?
I thought this was really inspiring for Leaving Academia readers…until I remembered that when you’re considering a career change, it’s not just about self-actualization. It is precisely about being able to pay the mortgage, have shelter, eat and keep the clothes on your back. Staying in academia as a contract prof makes it very, very difficult to do that, but leaving academia doesn’t promise any of those things, either. Hence the quandary academics face.
But I also read another interview with a different director, published in another local publication about a month ago. This was with Adventureland’s Greg Mottola, who said, “If this film doesn’t work out, there’s literally nothing on this planet I can do well.”
This also echoes the sentiments that so many grad students and scholars feel–if I don’t get a tenure-track job, there is nothing else I can do with my life to support myself. This brought me back to the question I’ve had for years: in what ways is being an academic-leaver different from leaving other types of jobs? What is it about academia that makes it seemingly more wrenching to leave than other careers in other sectors?
Tagged as:
career change,
university sector
I saw this advertisement for a “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” seminar coming to Toronto and I nearly laughed out loud. It’s written like a tragic morality tale, warning parents not to let their kids go to grad school:
I had two dads – a rich one and a poor one.
One dad was highly educated and intelligent; he had a Ph.D. and had completed four years of undergraduate work in less than two years. He then went to Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and Northwestern University to do his advanced studies, all on full, financial scholarships.
My other dad never finished the eighth grade. Both men were successful in their careers, working hard all their lives. Both earned substantial incomes.
Yet one dad struggled financially all his life and the other dad would become one of the richest men in Hawaii. One died leaving tens of millions of dollars to his family, charities, and his church. The other left a legacy of unpaid bills. Both men were strong, charismatic, and influential. Both men offered me advice, but they did not advise the same things.
The stereotype of the hapless academic continues (”money is the root of all evil” being, of course, the mantra of most academics making over $100,000 a year). But really, I’m still trying to figure out the whole gay subtext, here.
Tagged as:
humour
I’ve been working on the Leaving Academia project, on and off, for three years now. And there are 11 things that I absolutely know are true about leaving academia. They are:
1. You can do it. You can leave academia and survive. You can leave academia and THRIVE, in fact.
2. It is incredibly scary. Figuring out what to do in your postacademic life can feel like one giant question mark pressing down on you with a weight similar to that of writing a dissertation; with enough time, though, and enough self-reflection, you will figure out what you want to do.
3. Your whole life won’t come tumbling down into shambles if you leave.
4. You have tonnes and tonnes of options for your post-academic career (even though it may not feel that way), many of which have nothing to do with your area of study, but have everything to do with your core skills (e.g. project management, policy analysis, consulting, organizing).
5. You are not crazy if you want to have a satisfying job in a city you actually like and to have your partner and family living with you and to live near your friends.
6. You might not switch immediately into your dream job right away but you will get to your dream job a hell of a lot quicker if you bail from academia now rather than never (in fact, in my case, I didn’t want to jump into a challenging dream job; first, I wanted to just take an intellectual break with a nice little job with solid pay and fab benefits). It might take a few years for you to select the organization that you really care about and climb your way into the job of your dreams. However, just because you might start out closer to the bottom than you would like isn’t reason enough to stay in a career stream that might not ever offer you any satisfaction at all.
7. If academia WAS your dream job but you’re tired of living in the adjuncting/contract teaching trenches, there are other options for you to use your passion for teaching/learning, your communications skills, your love of reading and your skills at writing and researching. Remember, people–this is the knowledge and information economy we are living in. ABDs and Ph.D.s hold enormous currency in this era.
8. One really big secret: most people don’t give a shit if you leave academia, so don’t bother feeling guilt about leaving. Sure, some people like your grad supervisor or your faculty chair might be disappointed. But are you really going to make yourself responsible for their feelings, while totally denying yours? Come on. Leave that parent-child dynamic back in your family of origin where it belongs.
9. One other really big secret: a lot of people will actually be jealous of you if you leave academia. Sure, their jealousy might come out in the guise of contempt and guilt-making (oooh, if only I could name names and point fingers, here!). But just like the boy who is cruel to the girl he has a crush on, those unhappy people who try to rain on your bold career change have their own problems to sort out. Don’t make their problem your problem.
10. I also want to challenge the idea that once you leave academia, you can never go back. I have heard of a handful of examples of people returning to academia, either decades later as they channel their postacademic professional successes into academic work or as they return simply as adjunct/contract faculty. The sands of academia are shifting and my hunch is that the re-formulation of universities into job farms and knowledge-provision centres, and with the increase of private money (oops, I mean “partnerships”) into universities, that the door does not slam shut as firmly as it used to.
11. The other really, really big secret: you deserve better than the life you may be having and the treatment you may be getting in your grad school career. Grad school and contract teaching can suck out your soul; being on the tenure track can be fraught with fear as you wonder if this is what you really want to do, and if you want to do it in the city you’ve ended up in. You don’t have to put up with it any more. You have all the skills and resources you need to plan out a realistic, do-able career change. Just look at some of the people who have done just that. And the hottest one of all that I don’t think I’ve mentioned: the incredible Miuccia Prada has a Ph.D. in political science. Miuccia Prada! If that doesn’t serve as inspiration for becoming satisfied and successful in life beyond academe, I don’t know what does.
Is there anything I’ve missed? What would you like to add to this list?
Tagged as:
leaving
Last weekend was Easter weekend. For many people, it was a 3-day long weekend, and for some lucky folks, it was a 4-day weekend. If you’re an academic, though, chances are you didn’t have much of a weekend at all. Sure, you might have gone back to your parents’ place for dinner or an over-nighter. You might have put your feet up and finally had a chance to watch that Slumdog Millionaire DVD you picked up. But you might have just used your weekend in the way that academics often do: to work or to worry.
I can tell you with total honesty and sincerity that one of the greatest pleasures I experienced when I started my little joe job after I finished my Ph.D. was the weekend. It was actual me time (which is funny to think about, now that I’m a mom) that I could spend in any way I wanted without guilt. I could go for walks or watch TV or cook or read or hang out with friends and not have a monkey on my back. I could just breathe more easily, knowing that I was doing these things for their own sake, rather than as a pleasant diversion from the dissertation. It was a completely different way to live, and it took me months to really take weekends for granted (the way I do now).
Tagged as:
benefits,
guilt
Way back in the mists of time (er, that would be 2006), when I was thinking about leaving academia, I came across an article by Kenneth Mostern, Ph.D., called “On Being Postacademic.” This piece totally rocked my world. Both scholarly and inspiring, both critique and criticism, Mostern totally nailed so many of my feelings about scholarship and my flagging relationship to it. Little nuggets just leapt out at me, like this:
…The scariest thing a young faculty member experiences is not, as is conventionally supposed, the “need to produce” and therefore her/his experience is not aided by the “mentorship” of an experienced scholar. Rather, the young scholar’s fear stems from the fact that no one in the department is talking to each other about scholarship. Faculty are socializing, going out, schmoozing all the time, and the ideas that supposedly drive the work they do are not being discussed…The one conversation everyone is having incessantly is the one about the micropolitical maneuvers within the department…
Since then, Mostern has taken the site down where that article was hosted, but by generous permission, I’m able to provide it for Leaving Academia readers here. It’s a lengthy piece, but when you’ve got the time, give yourself a chance to sit down and chew on it. It’s well worth reading, both for those who choose to leave and those who stay.
A final note: after I’d first read Dr. Mostern’s piece, I sent him an email to let him know how much I appreciated it. This is what he wrote back:
Thanks for checking in. The happiest people I know — and I’m not talking about one or two, more than one or two dozen — are people who did their Ph.D.s and then went off and did something besides academia with their lives. Enjoy yourself.
Tagged as:
leaving,
postacademic
Back in 2007, I conducted a small series of interviews for the first incarnation of the Leaving Academia podcast. Some of those interviews ended up being hosted by University Affairs. This is one of them.
This interview is with Polly Washburn, a film and television producer who decided that instead of studying language, she wanted to play with it. This interview highlights a few interesting things:
- if you’re not sure if you want to stay or go, try arranging a leave of absence from your program
- if your values run counter to the values of your discipline, you may want to reconsider where you’re at
- going back to school (in Polly’s case, the screenwriting program at the Canadian Film Centre) can open the door to a whole new world
- be aware of the reasons why you’re doing a Ph.D.
Listen to the 10-minute podcast here.
A final note: since conducting this interview with me, Polly has gone on to launch her own film and television production company and pursue even more her crazy, creative dreams. I’ll post a follow-up interview with Polly within the next few weeks.
Tagged as:
podcast,
TV production
I’ve been blogging, on and off, about the process of leaving academia for three years now. At my old blog, I always found it both illuminating and sad when I would go through my site stats and discover that a lot of people discovered Leaving Academia by Googling “Ph.D. useless.” It’s self-evident why it’s sad, but it was also illuminating because there were literally hundreds of people typing this into their search engines.
Part of my mandate around creating this re-vamped version of Leaving Academia is to show people that having a Ph.D. (or being ABD) is not at all useless, let alone making you useless. In the coming weeks, I am going to launch a detailed, 5-part series aimed at helping you break down and identify your transferable skills (skills that I know ALL grad students have). But in the meantime, I’m going to throw out there a list I had brainstormed a couple of years back when I was trying to combat this “Ph.D. useless” misconception.
Read this list and let it wash over you. Have faith that you do have skills, assets and talents that are very much prized by employers in the private and public sectors. If any of this twigs with you, write it down. You can use it next week when the series on transferable skills starts up. So here goes:
Doing a Ph.D. makes you a communications expert:
- You write documents that are tailored for specific audiences, that must deliver certain pieces of information and draw conclusions from that information.
- You conduct lectures and presentations that demonstrate your ability to convey (sometimes complex) ideas verbally.
- You teach other people how to write similar documents that follow certain conventions.
- You have developed assessment methods/tools for evaluating others’ writing skills and you’ve implemented them fairly and consistently.
- You might also teach and assess oral communications skills.
- Your lesson plans are communications documents as well. Thinking about the goals you have for each lesson, the practices you will use to reach those goals, and the reflecting you do after class all point to the skills you have in effective communication.
- You have tonnes of experience as a group discussion facilitator.
Doing a Ph.D. makes you an expert in research:
- We live in the “information society,” right? Well, knowing how to access, categorize, analyze and synthesize information (which is what we do as grad students) is crucial in today’s economy. This is not just for corporate work but for NGOs and the non-profit sector, as well.
- Even if you don’t know how to do qualitative research, lots of places need researchers who don’t just do quantitative stuff; social science and humanities grads have their place doing research, too.
- Your dissertation makes you an expert in handling large volumes of information, both electronically and on paper. Managing information in a way that is well-ordered and can be easily located is a significant skill that many people do not have, but Ph.Ds do.
Doing a Ph.D. makes you an expert in looking for money.
- OK, perhaps I have a hint of bitterness here (don’t we all?). But seriously, there is, apparently, a booming industry in grantwriting. This is one of the consequences of the past couple of decades of neo-liberal cutbacks to the non-profit sector. So there are now tonnes of worthy places out there that need help in researching where to find the money and then securing funding. Although grant proposals look a little different from scholarship and bursary applications, the years you spent hustling money from SSHRC and other funding bodies gave you a lot of practice in writing for that audience. That kind of writing is a skill, honey!
- Those scholarship applications also help you develop the skill of “marketing” yourself, which feels totally repulsive, but comes in handy for job searches (academic and post-academic).
And then there all those “soft skills” that a Ph.D. helps you cultivate:
- Ph.Ds are masters/mistresses of time management and meeting deadlines (well, sometimes)
- Your organizational skills are superior.
- You can work well individually (helloooo isolation!), but you also work well in teams (TA team, departmental committees, and any organizations you were involved in, like the union or a publication).
- You learn things quickly and grasp complex ideas easily.
- You are a master/mistress with word processing programs, various Web browsers and possibly other software applications and operating systems.
- You are disciplined, motivated and a self-starter.
- You enjoy challenging yourself.
All of this is just the stuff that you do in grad school, let alone the stuff you did PGS (Pre-Grad School) or outside of grad school (volunteering, non-academic work). Start thinking this way and you might be able to start chipping away at all those years that grad school eroded your self-worth.
What other skills are ABDs and PhDs armed with? What do you think you offer an employer?
Tagged as:
skills
